


Remus Drabble Series

by ithilien22



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2006-10-20
Updated: 2009-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ithilien22/pseuds/ithilien22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each of Remus's years at Hogwarts, as told through five brief moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Year

  
**1\. [The Letter]**

 

He thought it was a joke.

And not, as one might assume, because it was an invitation to attend a school for wizards. After all, he’d grown up around magic his entire life. The part that didn’t make sense to him was that _his_ name was at the top of the letter.

 _Who in their right mind would let a werewolf go to school with normal kids?_ He had wondered as he read the crinkled letter for the thousandth time.

But then again, no one had ever accused Albus Dumbledore of being in his right mind.

 

 **2\. [Letting Go]**

 

At first, his father had forbidden it.

It had always been the two of them, John Lupin and his boy. He wasn’t ready to give that up. Remus was his only son, his firstborn. And he had already been forced to grow up much too fast.

But in the end, he hadn’t had the strength to say no when Remus had bombarded him at breakfast one morning with desperate eyes and a broken, “please, dad.”

 _How will I protect you now?_ He asked his son silently as the train carrying him faded into the distance.

A faint, imagined reply – “you can’t” – taunted him in his sleep.

Though he dreamed in black and white, the blood was always bright, sticky red.

 

 **3\. [Gryffindor Bravery]**

 

The first transformation was bad.

But then again, they were always bad. In truth, the constricted space of the shack wasn’t all that different than the basement at home. The morning after, all the usual bruises were still there.

But the school nurse didn’t have his father’s rough hands and calming voice.

At night, as he twisted in the uncomfortable hospital sheets, he wondered if he had made the right choice.

He might have been sorted into Gryffindor, but that didn’t make him feel brave.

 

 **4\. [Sirius Black]**

 

His new dormmate was starting to annoy him.

He had always been taught that it wasn’t polite to read over other people’s shoulders. When he pointed this out, Sirius Black shrugged.

“I read my name,” he said conversationally.

“I was just telling my dad about _all_ of my dormmates,” Remus told him, the words shooting out of his mouth, harsh and defensive.

Sirius responded with another shrug.

And for some inexplicable reason, Remus felt himself blush.

 

 **5\. [Lily Evans]**

 

Lily Evans always sat next to him in class.

She was a pretty red head who seemed to know everything, even though she hadn’t grown up around magic.

She smiled at him a lot, yet she seemed quite fond of glaring disapprovingly at almost everyone else. After he got back from the hospital wing, she even let him copy out her potions assignment.

When he mentioned this fact casually to his three dormmates, James Potter accidentally bit his tongue so hard it had to be magically reattached.

He knew, at eleven, that you weren’t supposed to be friends with girls. But he had also learned to take friends anywhere he could get them.

Besides, this girl knew _everything._


	2. Second Year

**1\. [The Truth]**

 

It was the scariest moment of his entire life.

Having friends was a new concept for him. Somehow, even though the four of them had been practically inseparable for the past year and a half, he still expected them to run away screaming. In fact, he wouldn’t even have blamed them.

Instead, James declared that it was “wicked cool,” and Peter Pettigrew (though obviously lost somewhere between frightened and fascinated) gave him a reassuring smile.

Sirius simply sat back and listened. After several minutes of silence had passed, he finally asked, “Does it hurt, when you transform?”

“Not really,” he lied, avoiding Sirius’s gaze.

When he finally glanced back up, the look of concern on Sirius’s face made his heart constrict painfully.

But he didn’t ask anything else.

 

 **2\. [Severus Snape]**

 

He forgave easily.

Too easily, Lily would always tell him. But the truth was, he was so grateful to James and Sirius for sticking by him that they could get away with murder and still be Gods in his eyes.

Yet he cringed slightly as he felt them both tense up with excitement as they ran ahead to catch up with the smaller boy.

As he turned away, he heard Sirius shout, “Oi! Snivellous!” from somewhere behind him. So he walked faster, blocking out the desperate curses and the taunting laughter.

His stomach turned as he tried not to imagine Severus Snape’s grey eyes, wide with fear and loathing.

 

 **3\. [Potions Partners]**

 

He and Severus were paired together as partners in Potions.

No one seemed particularly fond of this arrangement except for Remus himself, who happened to be dismal at the subject and didn’t particularly mind the thought of being paired with the most advanced student in the class.

But Sirius, of course, became determined to pick on him even more than usual, even after Remus pointed out that this wouldn’t exactly help his situation.

And Severus, for his part, tried immediately after class to switch partners (but Prof. Slughorn remained firm with the pairings).

At dinner that evening, Lily suggested (while glaring pointedly at James) that maybe they could just try being nice to Severus for a change.

But Remus’s smile just seemed to make Severus scowl harder.

 

 **4\. [Lily's Potatoes]**

 

Out of the blue, James began talking about Lily incessantly.

No matter what the topic of conversation, he would manage to bring it around to the subject of Lily Evans. And yet somehow, he didn’t seem to be aware that he was even doing this.

At dinner one night, Peter innocently asked James to pass him the potatoes. James responded by launching into a ridiculously long account of how Lily had been late to lunch the day before, and had subsequently been upset to find that the potatoes were already cold by the time she arrived. Likewise, Peter’s potatoes were also cold by the time James finished his story and remembered to pass them.

Remus and Sirius happened to find this new development extremely amusing.

Lily, however, did not.

 

 **5\. [Nothing Important]**

 

He woke one night to the sound of someone crying.

“Sirius?” he called out softly, padding over to the other boy’s bed.

The sound stopped immediately.

Remus pulled back the hangings to find Sirius curled up in his bed, his eyes puffy and swollen, clutching a letter from his parents that he had told them was “nothing important.”

“I’m fine,” Sirius assured him, without looking up.

“I know,” Remus answered.

But he crawled in beside him, nonetheless.


	3. Third Year

**1\. [First Kiss]**

 

Two weeks before Christmas, Lily kissed him.

To be fair, she had been in a mistletoe induced state at the time. Still, to the numerous witnesses present, it didn’t appear that she was trying particularly hard to fight it. And as bad luck would have it, James happened to be one of those witnesses.

He spent the rest of the night raving dramatically to the entire Gryffindor common room about how he had been stabbed in the back by someone he had once considered a true friend.

To punish such a betrayal, he refused to speak to Remus for days.

Oddly enough, so did Sirius.

 

 **2\. [Tagged]**

 

In March, the Ministry passed a new set of werewolf legislation.

To begin immediately, all known werewolves were to be tagged and registered. John spent four hours composing the letter to Remus telling him why he was coming to get him from Hogwarts; he just couldn’t find the words.

But Remus took the news calmly, as always. That night, he tried to slip out of the dorm room unnoticed, but Sirius caught him. When he managed to force the story out of him, he immediately insisted on coming along. Remus didn’t even try to talk him out of it.

When it was time, his father stood opposite him, leaning against the doorframe, eyes averted. And Sirius sat beside him on the examination table, squeezing his hand like a vice and watching as every single number was carved into his already scarred skin.

He had entered the ministry building as Remus Lupin, but he left as Werewolf No. 0234834734.

 

 **3\. [The Marauders]**

 

Their pranks were starting to become legendary.

Every time the spoons began to dance in the Great Hall or the suits of armor started shouting dirty limericks whenever someone sneezed, the teachers always looked to the four of them to place the blame.

Not that they were wrong to do so, of course.

One day, James declared that it was time they came up with a name. Sirius thought this was the lamest thing he had ever heard – and he voiced this opinion, repeatedly. It was Remus, in the end, who came up with “the marauders”.

“The marauders,” James repeated, as if testing the sound of it.

And from then on, they were.

 

 **4\. [Sneaking Around]**

 

He decided that James and Sirius were avoiding him.

For weeks they had been ditching him left and right – sneaking off in the middle of the night under James’s invisibility cloak. Sometimes they even took Peter with them. But they never once invited him to come.

When he tried to confront Sirius about it, he played it off as though Remus were paranoid, making Remus feel foolish as well as hurt. He had thought, if anything, that he and Sirius had become closer than ever this year. None of it made any sense to him.

 _What did I do?_ He wondered, as he listened to the other three sneak off into the night once again.

He convinced himself that his tears were tears of frustration.

 

 **5\. [Second Kiss]**

 

They were working after class on a potions project when it happened.

When their lips met, it was the most shocked Remus had ever been in his thirteen years. Not that they hadn’t been getting along better lately. In fact, away from the interference of Sirius and James, he and Severus had become something close to actual friends.

Still, that hadn’t exactly prepared him for having Severus’s tongue in his mouth.

When they pulled away, Severus had looked almost as shocked as Remus. Then his shock had abruptly turned to horror as he seemingly realized what he’d done and he ran out of the dungeons before Remus could form a single coherent thought.

The next day, he acted as though nothing had happened.

And neither boy ever spoke of it again.


	4. Fourth Year

**1\. [Lily's Crush]**

 

Lily came to visit him in the hospital wing after every transformation.

She never even made the slightest allusion to why he was there. She merely brought him chocolates and homework and always managed to slip out before his dormmates arrived.

Once, after a particularly bad transformation, he woke up to find her curled up in the bed beside him, the pillow damp with her tears.

This time when she kissed him, there wasn’t any mistletoe.

 

 **2\. [Odd Reaction]**

 

He decided to tell Sirius about the kiss.

At first he thought Sirius might hit him, but instead he just shrugged and asked why Remus thought he should care. His voice sounded nonchalant, but his eyes told a different story.

Remus blushed and answered that he had thought that Sirius could help him think of something to say to her so that she wouldn’t do it again.

“You don’t fancy her?” Sirius asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

“Of course not,” Remus told him.

At these words, a smile lit up Sirius’s face, confusing Remus even more. His friend remained in a decidedly good mood for the rest of the week.

Remus had never realized how cold Sirius had been to Lily over the past couple of years – until he suddenly wasn’t.

 

 **3\. [Girls]**

 

In December, Peter started dating a pretty girl from Ravenclaw.

All of the other boys were extremely jealous, bombarding him with questions about dates and kissing and whether or not he’d seen her knockers.

Remus pretended to be interested in these conversations, but his heart was never in it. While the other boys spoke of soft lips and warm curves, Remus dreamed of dueling tongues and hard angles. He woke up from his wet dreams feeling sick and ashamed.

Remus was beginning to think that maybe he didn’t fancy girls at all.

 

 **4\. [Dreams]**

 

Sometimes, when he saw Severus, he couldn’t help thinking about that time they had kissed.

They didn’t ever talk about it, but every once and awhile Remus guessed that Severus thought about it too. Their eyes would meet and Remus would blush and Severus would scowl and Remus would know that they had both been thinking of the very same thing.

Once he dreamed that he had tried to kiss Severus again. But when he pulled back it wasn’t Severus anymore, it was _Sirius_.

Dream Sirius punched him in the nose.

 

 **5\. [Another Truth]**

 

When Lily asked Remus to accompany her to Hogsmeade, he panicked and said yes.

James and Sirius were furious, no matter how many times Remus explained that he hadn’t _meant_ for her to ask him. By the time the actual day had come, Remus felt nauseous.

Lily must have sensed his discomfort, because as soon as they arrived in Hogsmeade, she pulled him away from the others to ask him what was wrong. They sat together on a quiet, out of the way bench and Remus searched for something, _anything_ to say.

“If you didn’t want to come with me, you could have said no,” Lily said quietly, when the silence stretched between them.

Remus took a deep breath, desperately wishing that this was one of those things that Lily could just _know_ without him having to tell her.

“I think I fancy blokes,” he whispered, almost too softly to hear.

Lily turned and looked up at him sharply. When she saw the fear and sadness in his eyes, her heart constricted painfully. Without thinking, she reached for his hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

“Okay then,” she said softly, and Remus had never felt so grateful to someone in his entire life.


	5. Fifth Year

**1\. [OWLs]**

 

Despite what James and Sirius said, Remus didn’t _like_ exams.

In fact, exams rather terrified him. Remus sometimes felt as though he spent all of fifth year in a desperate, terrified haze of studying. At night he dreamed of being handed OWL marks that contained merely one comically large ‘D’ scrawled across the entire parchment.

(‘D’ for ‘Dreadful’)

Eventually, Sirius had to resort to stealing his books or, on one memorable occasion, charming them into oblivion, in order to gain his attention for more than a moment. Remus tried to explain his anxiety, but he knew it was something Sirius couldn’t understand – Sirius, who was constantly trying to rebel, to break rules, to push limits.

What Remus wanted, more than anything, was to prove that he belonged.

 

 **2\. [Animagi]**

 

They started calling each other by the nicknames first.

It infuriated Remus to no end, these sudden new names that seemed to have no inherent logic or story behind them. He outright refused to use them, pointedly ignoring the pathetic pit of jealously that burned inside his stomach at the thought of yet another secret between the three of them.

But it turned out the secret wasn’t _from_ him, it was _for_ him.

One rainy afternoon, Prongs and Padfoot and Wormtail were suddenly and unceremoniously revealed to him, and it all somehow made even less sense than it had before. Remus could only stare at the three animals where his three friends had just been, completely at a loss.

When they transformed back, James rubbed a sheepish hand against the back of his neck and explained that they’d been working on it since third year, but it had taken a long time. Peter piped up to add that they just figured if they couldn’t be around the wolf as humans, then…well.

“All right, Moony?” Sirius asked softly.

Remus looked up at him incredulously, and then burst into tears.

 

 **3\. [James's Persistence]**

 

James wasn’t the most suave of suitors.

“For the last time, I’d rather kiss a…a _horklump_ than date you!” Lily screamed with feeling, stomping out of the Gryffindor common room. Many of the other students didn’t even bother to look up at the shouting nor at the portrait slamming closed behind her – they’d already heard the same argument several times that week.

James’s face was beet red as rejoined his mates in front of the fireplace, muttering, “I only asked her to Hogsmeade next weekend.”

Remus tactfully tried to suggest that perhaps he turn his affections elsewhere, but James ignored him rather pointedly.

He still hadn’t quite forgiven Remus for the mistletoe.

 

 **4\. [Sleepless Nights]**

 

Now every time Remus wrote to John, it felt like lying.

He hadn’t told anyone since Lily, not even Sirius – perhaps _especially_ not Sirius – but part of him really, really wanted to tell his father. Or, more accurately, part of him _needed_ to tell his father.

He lay in bed at night sometimes, agonizing over what his father’s reaction might be. Anger? Sadness? A weary acceptance?

Oddly, it was the last option that he feared the most – the idea that his father wouldn’t treat the news with shock or anger but with a calm recognition. _What else would I expect?_ his father’s voice, stripped of its usual lightheartedness, rang hollow in his ears, _You’ve always been a freak._

He tossed and turned, tangled in his sheets and wishing that he wasn’t too old to crawl in with Sirius like they used to when they were boys.

But then, that was the crux of his problem these days.

 

 **5\. [Odd Goodbye]**

 

When Sirius said goodbye for the summer, something was off.

Remus felt it straight away, as if Sirius was trying to tell him something, but couldn’t find the words. In the end, he had simply clapped Remus roughly on the shoulder and told him to stay in touch.

Before Remus could reply, Sirius had disappeared back into the crowd and John was suddenly in front of him, pulling his son into a bear hug and firing off endless questions about the school year even though he’d had regular owls from Remus.

Remus answered the questions as best he could as he followed his father off the platform, but his mind remained fixed on Sirius and his odd behavior.

He absently rubbed at his shoulder, a slightly perplexed frown slowly clouding his features.


End file.
